Zev , you sure that you don’t have a bad taste in your mouth for Arabs and Islam? They are doing some bad things to Israel and they for the most part have no respect for the religion that you ascribe to. So if “a bad taste in your mouth” isn’t a good way to describe it, what is? Indifferent? nah… Objectionable? that might work…'course that is about the same as “a bad taste in your mouth.”
Good. If I irritate you that much just by being on this message board, maybe you can get just an idea of what living in the middle of a stinking ass hog production region is like. At least you can tune out.
Gee, Willy, I can’t see how any of those quotes show that Zev dislikes Arabs or Muslims. I see two factual statements, one piece of speculation on a factual matter, and an opinion about a specific person. Try again?
If pigs could fly . . .
They would shit in everyones water…
Nah.
“There is no way something I know next to nothing about can compare with something I have seen firsthand”. :rolleyes:
My threats, from least to most threatening:
- Hog Producers: Who raise pigs and shovel slop.
- Robert Jr.'s Uncle, Ted: Who a drunken slob and raises taxes
- Osama: Who won’t eat pigs but associates with them.
Wow, you certainly did some serious research, Willy.
As Ferrous was kind enough to point out, the quotes you dug up (at least this time you didn’t take them totally out of context) don’t show that I dislike Arabs or Muslims in general.
The first quote was my opinion on the Saudi peace plan. If my displeasure with the plan means that I am anti-Arab or anti-Muslim then there are plenty of Arabs and Muslims (the leaders of Hamas or Hezbollah, for example, who would not like any deal where Israel gets to exist) who are anti-Arab and anti-Muslim.
The second quote was my opinion of Yasser Arafat. I will admit I do have a problem with him. But a problem with him doesn’t mean I have a problem with all Arabs any more than my problem with O.J. Simpson means I have a problem with blacks or professional football players.
The third quote was a question on what might have happened if the Arab nations surprised Israel in 1967 the way they did in 1973. It was simply a question, nothing more. I don’t see how you can say I am anti-Arab or anti-Muslim from that question.
The beginning of the fourth quote was a rhetorical question on why a military campaign is not inappropriate during a religious holiday. As precedent, I gave the fact that the Taliban’s co-religionists started a war on their opponents holiday (as well as their own, since Yom Kippur was during Ramadan that year, IIRC). I then pointed out that since it is unlikely that the Taliban would pause their attacks for American holidays (do you doubt this?) that we shouldn’t pause our attacks on theirs. This had nothing to do with their religion or that they were Arabs. If we were at war with France, I’d advocate attacking on Bastille day just like any other day.
The second portion of the fourth quote was a comment on the weather. Am I anti-winter?
Do I disagree with Muslims on matters of religion? Of course I do (if I didn’t, I’d be a Muslim). Do I disagree with Arabs in general on Mideast policy? You bet I do. Do I disagree with liberals on the issue of abortion-on-demand? Sure. But just like I don’t “hate” liberals, I don’t “hate” Arabs or Muslims simply because we have policy or religious differences.
Zev Steinhardt
Yeah. Still 1500 or so post of yours to read.
Actually you go on to say that you don’t know of anyone that would be any better to replace him. What do you base this on? Why don’t you tell us who you do know of that might replace him and why they would not be any better.
So you were happy about the “Arab Nations” attacking Israel? Or was there some displeasure with the “Arab Nations”? You have repeatedly told me that Israel <> Jews. Where do you get off making the same kind of query? What in your mind makes Arab nations any more Arab than the Jewish state is Jewish?
Zev, I never said that you were anti - Arab now did I ? I said that you have a “bad taste in your mouth”. It is a metaphor comparing what one might feel when tasting something that is not completely agreeable. Are you completely agreeable with Arabs Zev? I know you are not, and I think you are missing the point of the hog farm comparison, and I think your “bad taste in you mouth” probably has something to do with why you would choose to argue something that you admit you know little about. Give it a rest.
He said that he didn’t know of anyone better that could replace Arafat, not that he knew that there was no one better. There’s a difference.
The “Arab Nations” are the nations of the Arabian peninsula, the nations which belong to the Arab League, whatever, it’s a fairly standard term for the nations to which he is referring. As far as I know, Arabian is a geographical term. And even if he did use the term “Arab nations” inaccurately, it doesn’t equal evidence that he is disagreeable towards Arabs or Muslims.
How, pray tell, could you possibly know this? Please, explain. Your last attempts sucked, but maybe you’ll get a little closer to providing something rational to support this statement if you try a little harder.
No. He’s saying that he has seen nothing to indicate that the mass murder of several thousand people is an appropriate comparison to the damage done by hog farming. Basically, he’s pointing out the same truism as Godwin’s Law, namely that making comparisons to bin Laden/Hitler weakens your argument.
At the risk of injecting a little rationality into what seems to have abruptly become a pissing match, let’s try to put Bobbie K. Jr.'s comment into context. While his comparison was more than a little far fetched and stupid, there is some connection to what is going on in this State right now.
Within the last year or two the County Supervisors in, I think, Hamilton County, Iowa, tried to in assert county zoning restrictions on confinement livestock facilities. Out here in the land of the tall corn that means hog factories and the incredible quantity of stinking liquid manure they produce. Hardly a week goes by that there is not a manure spill someplace in the State that gets into a river or stream and kills a whole bunch of fish. For the most part the fish are trash fish, carp and shiner minnows, but the manure does foul the streams for a while.
The State Legislature in its wisdom authorized county zoning some years ago but denied the counties (and the cities for that matter) the power to zone, restrict, regulate or generally screw around with agricultural operations.
Hamilton County told a big hog outfit that they could not put up a confinement facility under its zoning ordinance. The hog company went to court. The trial court upheld the county on the theory that the county rules were health regulations, not zoning. The State Supreme Court, on appeal, said that the county’s rules were zoning and that the county had no authority to prohibit or regulate agriculture and that the hog company could put its facility wherever it damn well pleased and that the county could do nothing about it.
Meanwhile, our neighboring State of Minnesota enacted a moratorium on manure lagoons. Since lagoons are the only practical way to stockpile pig, chicken and other livestock waste, this meant that Minnesota was closed to new confinement facilities and Iowa was wide open.
This year’s legislature took up a bill that would have granted the counties SOME, but not complete, authority to regulate confinement facilities. There was a furry of arm bending, back rubbing and general legislative gaiety as the pork farmers lobby, the cattle feeders lobby, the packing house lobby, the insurance company that pretends it is a granger society and the “it’s my land I’ll do with it what I want” coalition put the old pressure on rural legislators who make up a majority of the two houses although they represent about 40% of the population. After an impressive display of political muscle by the anti-county zoning people the bill died an ugly death.
The bill will come up again next year and since the 2000 census will have kicked in by then the result may well be different. The fact remains that entrenched agricultural interests managed to defeat a measure that was clearly favored by a majority of the voters. In the mean time confinement hog lots are going up all over the place. The hog lot people know that they have about 18 months to get going because the rules of the game are going to change after that.
OBL may murder and bomb all he wants but he is not going to be able to thwart the will of the people. For the last 10 years or so Big Pig has thwarted the will of the majority that in this State. It was in this context that Kennedy made his ill-advised comment. The DM Register, ever looking for the sensational story, took some sort of second hand report of the Kennedy speech and ran with it.
You two may now resume your spat.
Spavined Gelding, your account of Iowas battle is a near mirror image to the battle in NC with one exception; These are not “trash fish” in the NC estuaries. These are flounder, trout, stripped bass, mussels, clams, oysters, crabs, shrimp, scallops, etc. “Governor Good Buddy” and his cronies have been cozy with the hog producers for a long while, ignoring the will of the people who must endure the consequences of their actions. “Governor Good Buddy” is also largely responsible for bringing the Global Trans Park to Kinston NC. Kinston has one of the most deplorable waste treatment systems in the state with violation after violation and spill after spill. Where is Kinston? Right along the Neuse river just a few miles above the Pamlico. The NC license plate agency was designated to collect $5 from every license tag applied for in five counties to construct the Global Trans Park. It is a multi million dollar facility built in a town that can’t even manage their own waste due to a lack of funds that they have been begging for.
And the comparison? I know everyone can remember when the media scare du jour was contamination of our water supply by Osama. Osama couldn’t do the damage done to our water supply by the hog industry if he tried.
Willy, don’t even think about pulling me into your silly ass fight or inducing me to defend Boy Bobby’s silly comparison. The last thing we need out here is some Easterner who can’t tell a barrow from a gilt telling us what’s good for us when we have long sense figured that out. The best way to piss off a Hawkeye is for some stranger to tell us that he knows us better than we know our selves. Thus the semi-hysterics from the DM Register. The same applies to you. You take care of your sewage lagoon and we will look to ours.
Spavined Gelding, I am also in Iowa and I have posted in support of more regulation for hog producers. It’s not just an “Easterner who can’t tell a barrow from a gilt” who is interested in this issue.
Ask around in Iowa: would you like a large new hog lot in or adjacent to your town? If you get one single yes, I’d be bloody surprised.
We all know too well what damage lagoons do. I’ll tell you that any time, and there are a lot of Iowans who agree with me, so don’t pretend this is a case of out-of-state leftists making an issue out of nothing.
To summarize:
1.) “Boy Bobby” did not make the comparison attributed to him so your comments about it are irrelevant.
2.) I agree that there was probably some overemphasis of the situation, but let’s not pretend that dragging up Sept. 11 is limited to one side. I’d be hard pressed to think of a recent issue that hasn’t been, in some way, tied to Sept. 11 because Sept. 11 is on our minds and incites an emotional response.
3.) Irresponsible journalism is not excusable just because you disagree with the speaker.
4.) Pollution is an issue that everyone has a right to an opinion about, and you certainly do not get a monopoly on the truth because you are a local, particularly when locals are hardly united on the issue.
Finally – since we’re in the Pit – use your fucking brain for a moment. You are yet another example of why people automatically assume the average IQ in our state is 50 below average. You’ve got my two cents – now go buy a clue.
I am not pulling you into anything. The best way to piss off a Tarheel is to put words in his mouth for him.
And the last thing we need here are the piss poor hog production pratices that originated in Iowa. Keep that nasty shit in your own back yard.
Um, Hi. Hate to interrupt, but it is very likely that Hog farming was responsible for the water pollution tragedy in Walkerton, Ontario, that led to dozens of people dying and hundreds becoming sick, in some cases receiving permanent damage even after they “recovered”.
So, when somebody says this:
I’d respond by pointing to the people of Walkerton, and suggesting that sins of omission can be as deadly and vile as sins of commission. Dead is Dead. Also that Hog farming can be deadly.
First point: I get irate whenever anybody compares their pet bete noire to the events of 9/11. That emphatically includes Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as well as Jerry Falwell, the anti-abortionists, the gay rights advocates who have addressed homophobia in those terms, the folks who feel that slaughter of animals for food and clothing is genocidal, and so forth and so on.
Sweet Willy did not make that comparison. He is defending the enormity of the hog waste problem in Eastern North Carolina, with which he, and I, are fully cognizant.
Those of you who were paying attention to the news in 1999: Remember Hurricane Floyd? Remember the dead animals, the flooded waste lagoons, the houses filled with polluted filth after the flood?
Several large pork producers have claimed that it would severely injure their profit to institute any means other than lagoons of disposing of hog waste. And because they are large contributors to the two political parties, they have been allowed to continue to accumulate hog waste in these lagoons.
Any hurricane runs the risk of flooding some of them. Floyd flooded them all. The ecology of Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds and most of the inland waterways was severely damaged. Nearly a million people were left homeless – not due to the flooding but because their homes were unsafe to return to thanks to the pollution brought in by the flooding. The number still homeless (in FEMA-supplied emergency housing, and facing eviction from that thanks to time limits on its use) is in six figures, IIRC (close to it, if not still there). Damage from Floyd was in the billions of dollars.
The majority of the pollution from the flooding, resulting in the majority of the damage both to the environment and the economy, was from the hog waste lagoons.
Was this damage the result of deliberate terrorist malice? Absolutely not. The result of criminally negligent behavior? IMHO, yes.
Are Willy and I calling it “equivalent to 9/11” in any way? No. Are we saying it’s a major and severe problem that RFKJr. has highlighted, albeit offensively? Yes.
Having vented at RFKJr., would you consider venting your spleens, not on an idiot from a famous family who has poor taste in drawing comparisons, but on criminally negligent corporations with no idea of social duty?
Couldn’t have said it better myself, Polycarp.
Hey, Fluid, (this being the pit) Get your head out of your ass; we are on the same side in this fight. My point is that we back country hicks are fully aware of what big time livestock production is doing to our State. The last thing we need is for some outsider (like Mr. Kennedy) whose sole claim to our attention is a famous name, telling us what we already know: that for too long we have been held captive by corporate agriculture. With the reapportionment of the legislature, however, we can hope that the grip the Ag-business Trust has had on out collective testicles is about to be loosened.
Fluid, you are closer to the excesses of monster confinement set-ups than I am. DeKoster’s several pig factories are just up the road from you. This part of the State is more inclined to small and medium sized dairy operations that to thousands and thousands of sows and feeder pigs under one roof. Like most people, I would be less than pleased if one of these operations set up quarter mile up wind from my home. The fact remains, however that so long as a hog (or chicken or beef or dairy or mink or what ever) confinement facility meets pretty minimum manure management standards as enforced by and increasingly over worked and under staffed and funded Dept. of Natural Resources there is nothing I can do about it under the law as it stands today.
As to whether Boy Bobby made the comparison between Big Hog and OBL, it is pretty clear to me that he said something of the sort and that its purpose and effect was to further polarize a fundamentally local issue. He just was not being helpful.